News

Ventura locals: We are cleaning house, all of our already marked down clearance boards are marked down an additional 20% off and our used boards are marked down an extra 10% off. We also have a few remaining boards in our factory 2nd sale, these boards are marked down 30+%. Quantities are very limited, no layaway. In store only

Malibu Barbie gets a makeover from L.A. designer Trina Turk

By Booth Moore, Los Angeles Times Fashion Critic

June 3, 2013, 12:02 p.m.

With her beach blond hair, cheeky tan lines and chic shades, Malibu Barbie has been a style icon for many a young girl, including this one. Now, more than 40 years after she first hit the pop culture wave, Malibu Barbie is getting a makeover, from Los Angeles designer Trina Turk. And this time, she’s wearing a bikini!

Starting today, the Malibu Barbie by Trina Turk doll ($50) and collection will be available at Trina Turk stores, TrinaTurk.com and BarbieCollector.com. The mythical Malibu icon is the perfect canvas for Turk’s cheerful 1960s and '70s-inspired SoCal aesthetic.

Turk dresses the doll in a printed bandeau bikini and hexagon white lace cover-up and accessorizes her head-to-toe with a beach tote, pink shades, short-shorts, a peasant blouse, floppy sun hat and white wedge sandals. She’s even got a chunky cocktail ring, pink cuff bracelet and a bottle of sunscreen. To add to the fun, Turk’s June 2013 fashion collection, titled “Malibu Summer,” features the same items for women, so life-size Barbies can dress like their miniature muses.

Turk admits to being a Barbie fan as a kid, when her mother, a seamstress, would make clothes for her collection of dolls. But the idea of working with Barbie actually came out of a visit last year to the L.A. County Museum of Art’s exhibition, “California Design, 1930-1965: Living in a Modern Way.” “We were working on our summer 2013 collection, and had been to the exhibition,” Turk said. “Mattel was a sponsor, and Barbie and her 1960 Dream House were featured. I had never thought of Barbie in terms of architecture, which is one of my hobbies, but I was looking at the house made of slotted cardboard, and realized that Barbie is actually a modernist. It gave me the idea to use Barbie as inspiration for my collection.”

Turk contacted Mattel for permission and representatives at the El Segundo-based company offered her one better — the opportunity to design her own doll for the Barbie Collector series, which has tapped more than 150 fashion, beauty and design collaborators over the years. “We decided on Malibu Barbie, who was born in the early 1970s, and hadn’t had a refresh,” Turk said. “Her look was pretty conservative — she wore a high neck swimsuit in a pale aqua color — even though I always think of the 1970s as bikini time. But the archivists at Mattel told us Malibu Barbie came out during a recession, and that her designers didn’t want her to look too ostentatious. So we decided to update her.”

Malibu Barbie’s original platinum blond hair now has streaky, John Frieda-esque highlights, and her ultra-long, free love blunt cut is more layered. She’s not as tan as she was in 1971 and comes with a bottle of sunblock “because now we know more about skin cancer,” Turk said. And in keeping with our shoe-crazed culture, she has a pair of totally impractical beach sandals -- white patent criss-cross slides with scooped-out wood platform heels, inspired by a vintage 1970s pair from Turk’s own collection. “It was amazing to see them come back to us in miniature size,” Turk said. “There was a lot of squealing in the office.”

Turk has also designed several summer lifestyle products, including SIGG water bottles ($30), beach towels emblazoned with an image of Barbie that’s a re-creation of a vintage illustration ($30), surfboards ($1,092) and stand-up paddle boards ($1755) that can be ordered fromWaldensurfboards.com.

For me, it was an amazing project to work on because there was so much synergy,” Turk said. “Sure, I’m not an amazingly-proportioned tanned person with long streaky blond hair, but our Southern California roots are what we have in common.”

The Walden FDR is a true hybrid SUP designed for both the casual and competitive racer in a variety of conditions including flat water, open water or distance paddling. The Walden FDR is designed to be fast, stable and user friendly. In flat water the FDR is stable and maneuvers without tracking. Stability comes from Walden's famous concaved hull, unlike many SUP's that have rounded bottoms, the FDR's concave’s create stability points reducing instability especially in more demanding, choppy conditions. For the distance paddler the FDR is efficient due to the lowered position of the rocker from the mid section to the tail which gives greater glide between each stroke. For racing, the FDR is fast due to the V shaped nose which creates a more efficient displacement of water compared to a flatter bottom nose which can push water and cost you valuable seconds.

Just in..Outside Magazine's Buyer's Guide for Summer 2013, featuring the new Walden Dually. Outside named the Dually the best board for cruising, this hybrid board is part performance board, part traditional. We love writer Mark Ander's description..."Like a mullet, this longboard perfectly matches two opposite styles." Available in 9'0, 9'6, 10'0

For those of you who get stumped when deciding what your custom Walden surfboard should look like we made up some color charts of some recent custom boards. If you see a design you like, we can always tweak it and change the color, scale, placement etc.

Broc Ellinger is a 21 year old photographer from the beaches of Ventura, ca. His active lifestyle is easily identified within the photos that he captures. From ocean scenery to urban landscapes, he truly provides the imagery of adventurous eyes. We met Broc after sending out a call for a local photographer on Facebook. Broc didn't answer the call but a local magazine editor did and recommended Broc. We met with Broc and liked him instantly so we hired him.

We did a small shoot at "C" Street in Ventura with some of our local riders, just to test Broc's skills. It turned out to be a lousy day, with not much surf but we decided to shoot anyway. When Broc came over to deliver the shots he said he was bummed at how few action shots he captured, when we looked at the shots we were anything but bummed. We love Broc's eye and his use of light, we shot at sunrise and Broc really captured the morning sun. Steve Walden's first words when he saw Broc's photos were.."wow, this kid is good". Visit www.brocellinger.com to learn more about this up and coming photographer.

We are re-posting an older article from Surfline.com . We have been asked since this article came out when the Tri-fold will be available, we hope to have all the product info and specs. out in the next two weeks and taking orders by mid-February

If you've been on a surf trip recently, then you've probably been there. Standing at the ticket counter, trying to convince the airline folks that there's only one board in that double coffin bag. And then fuming when they start extracting cash from your wallet for oversized baggage fees. One hundred to $200 bucks per board--each way. I'm pissed off right now, just typing those words!

Clearly the airlines aren't about to drop their surfboard fees anytime soon, but I did have a glimmer of hope recently when I heard about the new Walden Tri-Fold Travel Board (waldensurfboards.com). A folding surfboard isn't a new idea--it's been attempted in the past with marginal success. The bisect boards I've tested worked okay but always felt clunky and never provided a very high-performance ride (not something I'd feel comfortable paddling out on in head-high Mainland Mex surf). But Ventura-based shaper Steve Walden assured me he's developed a legit surfboard that can be folded into three pieces yet still rides like a conventional board with little to no unwanted flex and minimal added weight. I was skeptical, but stoked to give the Tri-Fold a test drive.

Seeing it packed neatly inside its suitcase, the 6'6" Walden looks like a few pieces of a broken board. But unpacked, it becomes immediately obvious how the thing works. A thin, high-tensile strength steel cable is threaded from the board's tail to the nose and back again, loosely holding each of the three pieces together. The edges of the board are buttressed with cedar wood and a metal cap. Simply insert a socket wrench into the small round cavity in the tail and start tightening the 18-inch long bolt connected to the cable. As the nut tightens onto the bolt, the pieces of the board join together tighter and tighter--works on the same principal as big suspension bridges. A couple minutes later, the Walden is tight and ready to surf.

Once in one piece, the Tri-Fold feels almost identical to a standard surfboard. The added hardware and dual stringer add just 1.5 to 2 pounds to the weight of the hand-shaped shortboard--so the extra weight isn't all that noticeable, especially not in the water. And Walden says the Tri-Fold is about 50 percent stronger than a conventional board thanks to its dual wooden stringers and the steel cable stringer.

We tested it in overhead beachbreak waves in North County San Diego with good results. In the water, we felt almost zero abnormal flex to the board while surfing. Only when duck diving larger waves did we feel the front third of the board flex slightly. It paddled easily and configured as a quad (our demo board has five fin boxes) the Tri-Fold was responsive and rode nearly as well as a one-piece board. The only real negative we found was that some water collects inside the cavity where the cable runs adding to the weight of the board. After a surf we could hear it sloshing around inside but we just loosened the pieces, the water poured out and it was good to go again.

The Tri-Fold option will be offered in a variety of Walden shapes from 6' shortboards to 12' longboards and will add an extra $300 to $500 bucks (depending on size) onto the cost of a traditional board. A custom suitcase-style travel bag will run you an extra $125 and can fit your board, a wetsuit, trunks and a couple leashes. Best of all, boards from 6' to 7'6" will fit inside the suitcase which falls below most airlines' standard checked baggage regulations (62 inches total combined length, width and height) which means you'll skip out on the exorbitant oversized baggage fees. The Tri-Fold will also be handy for flying on those smaller, inter-island puddle jumper flights that often can't (or won't) accommodate boards over six-feet long; and for getting your board into a taxi at the airport. One guy in the Surfline office mentioned that he thought this board would be perfect for bringing along on a business trip or a "non-surfing vacation" with your girlfriend or spouse somewhere there might also happen to be waves.

While we're still testing the board for long-term durability, our initial evaluation shows that the Walden Tri-Fold works surprisingly well. The folding tech is ingenious, and equipped in the right shape it would make a handy addition to any traveling surfer's quiver. Bottom line: The Tri-Fold rides much like a regular board, and you'll likely save the equivalent of the added cost for the board in baggage fees on your first two trips.

New and in stock, the 2013 Magic Dually! The Dually is Steve's newest design and the board he is most stoked about as are our dealers. The Magic Dually debuted last week at Surf Expo, our dealers loved the design. If your in the South Florida area visit the Longboard House and check out their inventory.

What is it?

The Magic Dually is an integration of the best characteristics of a traditional longboard and a high performance longboard. Steve Walden likes performance boards and therefore that is what he has been building for over 50 years. Steve explains the idea behind the Dually... "The Magic Model which is the platform for almost every board I shape/design is the ultimate board for my kind of surfing, I like the maneuverability, speed and power. That being said there are days that I still like a traditional board for some old school trimming. The idea behind my Dually design is to combine the best of a traditional board with the best of my high performance Magic Model".

The challenge with the Dually was to take the best of each style of board without creating a watered down hybrid. It took some R & D to find the right percentage of traditional board to performance board. What the finished design has is a traditional front end and a performance tail. How and where the two style of boards meet...well, as they say that is where Magic happens.

We joke that this is a buy one get one free board, it's two boards in one, the nose is all about trimming and old school surfing and the tail is all about maneuverability and speed. The Dually isn't a as much an evolution of a design but a new category of design. The Dually started as a single model for us, but we have been so stoked by the concept of dueling parts we see the Dually becoming a category more than a single model.